Alexander the Great’s (Marble) Head Turned Up in New York. U.S. Officials Say It Was Stolen—and Just Sent It Back to Italy

As part of a longstanding effort to help Italy track down its missing treasures, the U.S. returned hundreds of ancient archaeological finds this week

Christian Thorsberg | Daily Correspondent

April 30, 2026

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The marble head of Alexander the Great—carved in the first century C.E. and missing its nose and forehead—was the centerpiece of a ceremony held this week in Rome to celebrate the return of more than 300 artifacts from the United States to Italy.

The Macedonian king’s likeness was on display alongside dozens of busts, vases and coins from ancient Rome, Greece and Egypt, dating between the fifth century B.C.E. to the third century C.E., as U.S. and Italian officials exchanged remarks of cultural goodwill.

“There’s no country in the world that has history ​and culture like Italy, and the United States will always do whatever it takes to help bring these wonderful artifacts back to your very special country,” Tilman J. Fertitta, the U.S. ambassador to Italy, said at the event, reports Reuters’ Crispian Balmer.

In 2018, New York authorities seized the marble head of Alexander the Great from a local gallery after determining that it had been stolen decades earlier. Archaeologists unearthed the artifact at the Roman Forum more than a century ago and placed it into the collection of a museum in Rome. But record keeping at the museum was poor, court records show. Officials estimate that the head, which depicts Alexander as Helios, the sun god, was stolen sometime between 1910 and 1960, when an inventory of the museum’s collections revealed that it was missing.

“The actual theft of the Head of Alexander appears to have gone unnoticed for at least years, if not decades—not terribly surprising given the size of the Forum and the intervening world war,” a New York Supreme Court document reads.

The head turned up decades later in New York, where it was subsequently sold twice at auction—once in 1974, and again in 2011—before entering federal custody.

Also returning to Rome is a bronze sculpture of a winged satyr that was stolen from Herculaneum, an ancient town that was buried under the ash spewed from the eruption of Mount Vesuvius; two Egyptian sculptures carved from basalt; 15 gold coins that date to the Byzantine era; the rudder of a ship; and a vase from the southern Italian town of Canosa di Puglia, known for its olive oil production.

More than 20 items were returned from the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, including Greek ceramic cups from about 500 B.C.E. and gold earrings from the fifth century B.C.E., the New York Times’ Elisabetta Povoledo reports.

This repatriation of artworks that were stolen or illegally sold from Italian excavations and institutions and trafficked to the U.S. is the result of years of collaboration. In December, the two countries celebrated the 25th anniversary of a landmark agreement that has spurred the return of more than 5,000 items to Italy. The Italian Ministry of Culture keeps a database of stolen cultural goods and maintains that more items in the U.S. rightfully belong to Italy, a claim that dealers and museums sometimes dispute.

This week’s event, announcing one of the largest antiquities hauls in years, was the culmination of several investigations by agencies including the FBI and Homeland Security Investigations. The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office tracked down more than 200 of the returned items.

“Protecting cultural heritage means defending memory, strengthening identity and passing on to future generations the ​value of culture as a ​universal public good,” Alessandro Giuli, the ⁠Italian culture minister, said at the event, per Reuters.

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Christian Thorsberg is an environmental writer and photographer from Chicago. His work, which often centers on freshwater issues, climate change and subsistence, has appeared in Circle of Blue, Sierra magazine, Discover magazine and Alaska Sporting Journal.